“It was not in use,” said Pamela Ronald. “Very, very low yield and very poor flavor, so no one was eating it. It’s really more like a grassy weed, but it had these properties.”
“It” is a rice from eastern India which was known ((By farmers, the article says. But then Dr Ronald says it was not in use. Was it information recorded by a conscientious germplasm collector?)) to survive under water. Listen on VOA to how Pamela Roland identified the sub gene in this variety and then introduced it into the popular Swarna.
“We wanted to hear what kind of difference it made to their families, and a couple of the women told me that they were able to feed their families and they had extra rice to sell, which is really important in those areas to bring in a little cash,” said Pamela Ronald.
I just think that Pamela Roland is a very pessimistic person and will do no help to anybody. This crop is very exceptional, if there are flaws, then remedy it, make better crops, stronger resistant crops. And not call them “things” for goodness sake, and they don’t just bring extra cash in. This is a bloody breakthrough, it could and would make a big difference to humanity, and she’s just not helping at all.
Liz, can you explain a bit further? Pamela Ronald was one of the scientists who helped to identify the gene that allows rice to survive being submerged for long periods of time. The breakthrough is hers. So in what sense is she “not helping at all”?
By “it” she meant to the original landrace from which the gene was identified, not the end result, which as Jeremy points out Pamela Ronald was instrumental in producing.